[bholley]

My impression (without any internal knowledge on the subject) is that this was intended as a way to promote Firefox to Mr Robot viewers. A lot of people in this thread seem to have this backwards, IIUC - it's not an ad for Mr Robot, it's the onboarding experience of an ad for Firefox that ran in Mr Robot.

The folks behind this presumably wanted this experience to be seamless, and were also trying to keep it under wraps to preserve the surprise factor. This meant that they bypassed the usual processes by which Firefox engineers would have had the opportunity to (a) raise concerns about the deployment approach, and (b) suggest other mechanisms that would have achieved the desired experience while keeping deployment appropriately scoped.

It's really heartbreaking that it ended up this way. The marketing team was trying to think outside the box to bring new users to Firefox, which is crucial if Quantum is to succeed. Surprises and stealth are the bread and butter of marketing, but they didn't think through the dangers of applying those things to engineering. Moreover, the very nature of surprise and stealth meant that they missed the chance for internal feedback before it went live.

A lot of us inside Mozilla are hurting right now. We poured our lives into Quantum for two years for the long-shot dream of giving Firefox a fresh start and saving the web from monopoly. It's frustrating to feel that all our hard-earned goodwill might be squandered by a few people and a botched marketing stunt. But the people behind that stunt were only trying to help, and I'm sure they feel especially terrible right now too.

Mozilla will learn from this. But the mistakes here are probably less sinister than they may appear, and it would be sad if they caused our most closely-aligned users to switch to Chrome.

[resfirestar]

Thanks for the balanced view of what probably happened here. The question I'm left with is: why can the marketing team deploy SHIELD Studies without engineering oversight? This seems like a policy 101 thing, and has me worried enough to untick the preference until this is (hopefully) addressed by a future statement.

[keithpeter]

I'd say that this procedural fail makes it impossible to recommend Firefox at present.

[ikurei]

So what would you recommed for non-techical users? Does this put Firefox behind Chrome in your opinion?

[keithpeter]

I guess it has to be chromium. Unsatisfactory situation.

[leeoniya]

the problem is that this is recurring and the apologies are now mostly meaningless. action, not words are needed.

i would have been happy to write this one off, but the ship has all but sailed. the ice is so thin that you guys are one PR disaster away from a mass exodus of people who trust you.

if mozilla learned anything from the Pocket disaster, it would have immediately made it a removable addon and genuinely apologized. instead, there it is in my toolbar on nightly. i know you guys bought them, but that's a solution that only addresses the privacy aspect - you went from nonremovable Pocket to nonremovable Mozilla/Pocket.

every misstep that has happened with "enhancing the user experience" is an affront to the brilliant engineering you guys are doing. you're literally shedding user-engineers - not unlike yourselves - over these user choice, bundling/marketing double-speak, viralgrab and privacy fiascos.

i'm reasonable. i understood the DRM situation. the content providers make the rules and the consumers make the choices based on where they can consume the content. many people went apeshit with ideology. but mozilla is in full control of everything that is going on right now.

> This meant that they bypassed the usual processes by which Firefox engineers would have had the opportunity to (a) raise concerns about the deployment approach, and (b) suggest other mechanisms that would have achieved the desired experience while keeping deployment appropriately scoped.

i don't know what's worse, that users don't know what's going on, or that the engineers don't. here's an apt description for this: rgba(0,0,0,1)

rather than being delighted to discover features i didn't know where in there, i'm now horrified to discover them. i'm becoming mozilla's unwitting social testing platform and this is unacceptable. it is not what i signed up for with firefox 1.5. there's a reason that Tor's browser is firefox; i think this reason is ripe for re-evaluation.

mozilla is long overdue for automated regression tests of their core values.

plz don't take this comment personally. i have huge respect for the work you do. it's a shame the engineers are not in control of their destiny; they rarely are.

[Piskvorrr]

"Mozilla will learn from this" When, at 0.1% user share? Did you look at the browser usage graph recently? This is a pure CFIT action, and I doubt that the browser still has altitude to recover - especially as Mozilla has repeatedly shown that learning from such incident does not, in fact, happen. A single incident, back when FF had ~50% of the eyeballs, could have been acceptable^Wexcusable; in current situation, this seems like deliberate sabotage when seen from outside.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_flight_into_terrain

[pault]

I got a sinking feeling reading this comment and realizing how easily I could imagine myself in this situation (especially as a Mr. Robot fan). While I do agree that transparency and user control are Firefox's most vital components as an alternative to non-free browsers and any failures there are very concerning, I'm also extremely impressed with the Moz foundation in general and the quality of the quantum updates in particular. I don't think this incident alone is enough to irreversibly tarnish Mozilla's reputation, but it's good to know the issue is being taken seriously internally.

[christophilus]

Same. I've deployed some dumb stuff in my time, and when it hits the fan, that sinking feeling is just the worst.

[dordoka]

Thanks for your hard work. I'm onboard since that 0.4 Phoenix version. Left you for Chrome for some time... now back to Firefox thanks to Quantum project. You should learn from these kind of mistakes, but I won't leave Firefox, nor stop recommending it instead of Chrome or Edge.

[bholley]

Thank you (and pault) for the kind word and understanding!

[erdi42]

The core problem is not Mr Robot but that Firefox contains a function to add and remove addons without even leaving the slightest notification.

This scares me an many others quite a lot.

Thanks for listening.

[keithpeter]

"But the people behind that stunt were only trying to help, and I'm sure they feel especially terrible right now too."

Are those responsible for this stunt still employed at mozilla? If so, you can say goodbye to trust of most of the technically aware world. I cannot recommend Firefox while idiotic stunts like this are institutionally viable - have you got the message?

[beobab]

It seems like you are saying: If anyone in an organisation does something stupid which makes a bad impact outside the organisation, then they must be punished by losing their job.

I humbly suggest that your message might be a little harsh and unforgiving. Is there anything I can say which will change your mind? Kindness has a place in the world. Please help me preserve it.

[remi42]

Nice explanation. I appreciate that. But it's too late to lock the stable door because the horse had bolted. Sorry guys.

[AlexAffe]

Marketing... Look. Have everyone at job interviews create their own gpg key and send an encrypted and signed email to you. When they manage: welcome to Mozilla. You can't have some coked up marketing maniacs sitting making decisions like that.

[yawaramin]

> ... it's not an ad for Mr Robot, it's the onboarding experience of an ad for Firefox that ran in Mr Robot.

That doesn't make any sense--if it's an ad for Firefox, why is it in Firefox, which is presumably already being used by the target audience? It should be in some other site or software set up by the Mr Robot production company which directed people to Firefox, no?

[bholley]

I'm not privy to the details, nor have I ever seen Mr Robot. That said, I believe there were hints in the show about using Firefox to solve some mystery. The idea was that users would then go open Firefox (which may have been sitting unused on their machine for years), and then discover that Firefox and Mr Robot were in cahoots. The viewers would presumably find this cool and exciting, but everyone else demonstrably found it creepy.

If I understand correctly, at some point when following the breadcrumbs the user is given the opportunity to opt in to the game. I think everyone now agrees that this opt-in step should have triggered the download and installation of the add-on, rather than the activation of a dormant add-on that was deployed to every single Firefox user.

[yawaramin]

If Firefox had been sitting unused on their machine for even a few months, they would quickly discover that it was outdated and would have to start a cycle of updating and restarting to get to Quantum (I assume this extension won't work on earlier versions). This would presumably quickly put off most users.